The most recent version of my Top Ten List for 2003
[Much like the computer you're viewing this on, the list will probably be horribly outdated by the time you get around to it.
The most current display is always on display at the very bottom of this page.]

01. Irreversible (Gaspar Noe)

Never meant to be a shock-fest merely through it's content (or should I say, not merely content to be a shock-fest), instead Noe uses the camerawork and a variety of other audience-pummeling visual snares to create unapologetic extremes of violence, suspense and of character. He also tells the story backwards, spiraling from degradation to innocence, channeling a purity from the most compelete and utter of tragic inevitabilities.

02. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki)

Like the best seemingly unbiased documentaries, Capturing the Friedmans is not only compelling, but mentally pressing: You really feel like you have to choose sides to avoid getting a migraine during attempts to decipher the complexity of its actual - however illogical - outcome.

03. Kill Bill: Vol 1 (Quentin Tarantino)

A completely brilliant genre re-creation, swelled to bursting with Tarantino's trademark egomaniacal (and admittedly boner inducing) grasp and execution of the cinematic landscape. It's a popcorn movie for buffs of at least three niches, a cocky collection of excess and homage, and once more, it's got a viciously agonizing built in tension (Vol. 2 is four months away!)

04. The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet)

This year's most original work (even for animation). They hunt frogs with landmines. For Dinner. Do you really need to know anything else?

05. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)

It's the rare (rather badass) trick to glean from films you know people will know you gleaned from and still make your own film every bit as good and as now as those films were in their times. I got downright giddy in my seat when the strobe light started underscoring the techno at one point and, you know, it was like anything could happen. (Point being, when I talk about this film, I sound like a little kid.)

06. The Good Thief (Neil Jordan)

That nook in my crannie that I just couldn't seem to let out of my sight all year. Every time I re-evaluated the year as a whole, I could always see myself making space for The Good Thief. Nolte is absolutely smashing, rattling off the philosophy of gambling with smooth, world-weary charm. Thing is, don't stand too far away trying to observe it from a distance; it's all on the exterior and it all melts in your mouth

07. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson)

Luckily for us - in its tremendous battle sequences, its fateful immensity, its teary finale - Return of the King is one of the most thorough films you'll ever see. Instead of walking out of of Return of the King in blatant anticipation of relief (as you did with the previous two films) this film, in fact, is that relief.

08. Gerry (Gus Van Sant)

I believe Gerry to be a most extraordinary motion picture in possession of a number of the same overpowering meditative traits as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Essentially, as in Kubrick's magnum opus, the viewer is very carefully assumed into the spectrum (obviously, as the poetry seems to flow as if constructed for a viewer, rather than displayed through a solely important context or narrative); What we watch is only a projection of how it causes us to reflect. Gerry is a vision of how the endless wide open of our mysterious world is still (and will always) continue to overshadow any sort of petty struggle man has.

09. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)

a) Immediacy - because, unless it wins an Oscar, I doubt Weir, Crowe and the two studios who footed the bill are going to churn out another one.
b) Impossibly brilliant timing - quick: name four other action movies that didn't suck this year? (No, because you can only name three: X2, T3 and The Core.)
c) Classical look - lack of light and flare a la Amistad or Quills (almost to excess).
d) Physical thrill - Master and Commander is the ever rare film you want to immediately go out and re-experience.

10. Owning Mahowny (Richard Kwietniowski)

I wrote a ton of really gaudy shit about this film. Let's revisit it, shall we: "It's a cautionary tale - but with all the annoying facets usually associated with that tag left, safely, outside the frame...less a film about the addiction to gambling than it is about a gambler addicted to a double life full of such cheap irony...Eschewing any sort of loud, stylistic volume, [Kwietniowski] has a terrific ear for tiny, incidental dialogue...Mahowny's world is a self-fulfilling prophecy that skips like a broken record...in a milieu that feels like a series of  doomed guilt vacations, experienced through advanced sleeplessness...I'm carefully picking over [Philip Seymour Hoffman]'s  profile on the imdb as I write this, attempting not to upstage several previous hyperboles. (So, in other words, I'd like to say this is his best performance to date - but somehow I doubt anyone who has ever read anything I've written about him would find any real meaning in those words.)

Grand Jury Prize
[or, films that at one time graced my top ten list but were totally bumped
when a film came along that I was certain would make me look cooler if I pretended to like it]

All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green)

Whereas his debut [George Washington] was a circumnavigated homage to Terence Malick's hazy, tone poem storytelling, All the Real Girls is far more concerned with its characters and how they communicate the emotional tumbles of their existence without the shackles of convention.

American Splendor (Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman)

It's like a smiling God gift that Paul Giamatti was hired to play Pekar but, as we see from the various other real-life appearances, the other major smarts of this picture lie in its own self-promotion: Giamatti, Hope Davis and Judah Friedlander are put up against their real life counterparts and, miraculously, withstand the test.

Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton)

Its got that odor of pleasant, kind entertainment that's - at this point - synonymous with the bouncing desk light:: The mere presence of consistent - if monotonously unceremonious - quality..

Friday Night (Claire Denis)

Mostly a workspace for marvelous visual storytelling and moody cinematography. Ever notice how Paris looks different in every film? It looks awesome here.

House of Sand and Fog (Vadim Perelman)

The film so belongs to Kingsley, always better when playing the hell out of the ambiguous side of unscrupulous, never more brilliant than when he's playing a foreigner and, par for the course, giving a fireworks display of unbending will that calls to mind a decade-older, Iranian Don Logan.

Intacto (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo)

I wrote pretty much straight fluff about this terrific little thriller. In my place, I'll allow Chuck Odell to sum things up: "Luck actually behaves like an RPG stat, and can be transferred between people". That's all you really need to know, right?

Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)

Coppola feels the rhythm of quiet, human conundrums - and their familiar, deeply universal resonance - with a big sound; The absence of intensity makes it feel like the ultimate improv movie. Murray's (deservedly) much-touted performance reminds me of  the interview he did with Charlie Rose (for Rushmore) when he talks about his time in Paris and how he bummed around and went to the movies all the time.

Love Actually (Richard Curtis)

Swordfish alert! Ben has a left field theory! Instead of being a rotating pick-n-snatch of nine different romantic comedies at once, Love Actually turns out to be one of the most darkly self-deprecating anti-romantic comedies ever made. There's no way Richard Curtis meant us to take this at face value. (Is this theory as cockamamie as it sounds? In a word, yes. In another sixteen words, E.M. Prigge says: "I agree with all you said about Love Actually, but I don't think their good attributes.")

21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)

Holy shit, for about thirty minutes, this thing was definitely the best thing I saw all year. (The focus, I think, would have better served this viewer, were it purely on putting this whole mess of emotions together in my head as the film pretty much collage'd the story; But my wife tells me that I would probably have qualms with that, too and I should stop wishing that films were told out of order and also that this desire makes me a communist.) Luckily, all three performers - the heart-impaired consoler (Penn), the woman (Watts) with the dead family and the ex-con (Del Toro) who accidentally killed them - are in terrific form, giving performances that complement Inarritu's (now?) trademark use of reality in a box (read: hand-held) on a surface of pure, unadulterated grain.

Winged Migration (Jacques Perrin)

This hypnotic National Geographic-style "documentary" is packaged like a festival of raw birdy footage taken from the rods and cones of childrens eyes.

I originally wrote that these were movies I wish I'd had the gumption to see, but actually, they're films I don't feel a well-rounded year's viewing complete without: [criteria in priority order: a) critical darling; b) director I dig; c) some loser reccomended it; d) I'm hoping to air more dirty laundry by seeing installment #3 of what has to be the most cruelly wretched sequel ever forged.]

    The Barbarian Invasions, Bus 174, Casa de los Babys, The Cooler, The Company, demonlover, Dirty Pretty Things, Divine Intervention,
    Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary, Elephant, The Eye, The Fog of War, The Human Stain, In America, In My Skin, Intolerable Cruelty, The Last Samurai,
    Lilya 4-Ever, The Magdalene Sisters, The Matrix Revolutions, The Missing, Mondays in the Sun, Open Range, Paycheck, Pieces of April, Runaway Jury,
    Shattered Glass, The Singing Detective, The Son, Stuck on You, To Be and to Have, Together and Veronica Guerin.

the pre-2003 viewings: Films of note I'd never seen, but have now
[coming soon: audio clips of me failing (miserably) to pronounce French words and my  man Randy correcting me]

Wurst of the year: [Liver vs. Brat]

1. Gigli (Martin Brest)

Everybody who believes that the tabloid sensation of Matt Damon's twin and The Booty Princess had anything to do with the quality of this film, raise your hand. (You're hereby banned from this site.) I took a touch of flack-brand critique for assigning a requisite F to this tirelessly exploitative film and I'd take it again. Gigli was a painful film experience.

2. Freddy vs. Jason (Ronny Yu)

A complete failure of crossover and satire (it feels like its merely pretending to poke fun at itself). Watch this and Rugrats Go Wild on a double bill for a lovely evening where the originality of characters is completely marred as they are herded into a detention area with other somewhat original characters and, subsequently, poked to death with the money stick. For 90 minutes.

3. The Matrix Reloaded (The Wachowski Bros) (Manny, Mo and Jack!)

You'll notice this was the longest review I wrote this year. Or last year. Always a bad sign. (And as I'm plucking zingers from my notices, I've realized that I'm entirely too lazy to read through that rebel yell again, so here goes: Remember in the first film when you could follow what was going on? Wasn't that something?)

4. How to Deal (Claire Kilner)

Like Serendipity, it is a film where the actual romance is cordended off - in this case, to a musical montage - and treated as if it is taboo and uninteresting. Apparently, life issues can be solved with a wacky wedding and the wisdom of a dope smoking grandma. And also, I refuse to take seriously any film wherein a girl gets pregnant with her dead boyfriend's baby during the spring and doesn't realize she's pregnant until several months into autumn.

5. Bad Boys II (Director's name can only be read in loud, Preview-style voice, as in Directed by Michael Bay!!!!)

Watch! As Bay pilphers his own film - this film - with a watered down car chase in which things fall from the back of a truck and threaten to stop our "heroes" dead in their tracks (similar to a moment thirty or so odd minutes prior when slightly larger things fell from the back of a slightly larger truck "threatening" to stop our heroes dead in their, ahem, tracks). Shriek! As Will Smith's now preposterously implausible hyper-cursing "bad boy" attitude slams headfirst into the image he's
spent the last several (very profitable) years cultivating. Run! From that stupid, pre-packaged toe-tag of "fun" that's always guiltily tugging at you in the summertime.

6. Daredevil (Mark Steven Johnson) (Why didn't they sell this on "From the Director of Simon Birch"?)

If you bought a ticket for Spider-Man, I'm pretty sure it's your fault this film exists. So, thanks a bunch.

7. Love Liza (Todd Luiso)

There's always one indie movie that makes you want to kill yourself. On the other hand, if you were in the market for a film that, for a stretch of thirty minutes (at least), contains nothing but scenes of Philip Seymour Hoffman moping around his house, huffing gasoline - you're found your match. (Pun largely intended)

8. Rugrats Go Wild (John Eng and Norton Virgien)

For some reason, the characters are nothing like they are in the popular television series' or equally popular feature films'. And the Rugrats seem banished from their imagination almost as much as the Thornberrys seem pointless (since they know about Eliza's ability to talk to animals). And also, the songs sound as if composed on a Casio minutes before production.

9. Anything Else (Woody Allen)

Okay, two characters (one of them is Woody Allen) - both comedy writers for nightclub acts - walk the streets and talk about philosophy, art, film, sex, etc. One has this girlfriend who is mega-charming, always late, takes pills and can't seem to hop out of the neurotic turnstile. To quell his anxieties, he talks to the screen. Also, it's not called Annie Hall.

10. Sylvia (Christine Jeffs)

Some of Paltrow's most dubious sequences (particularly the lamp-staring session at close) are often merely hilarious distraction from how patently idiotic the title is:  Not for a second does Sylvia penetrate the character of Miss Plath. Paltrow is on autopilot, by which I mean she makes this perpetually annoying shit-sulk face from start to finish.

The Battlefield Earth prize [for most unintentionally hilarious film of the year], goes to Dreamcatcher for about ten reasons, some of them dealing with the unnecessary military subplot wherein Morgan Freeman flies around fighting aliens as he hears them talk in his head - the rest of the reasons can be summed up in P. Greg's delightful reimagining of the title: Ass aliens.

My year in movies: [A briefing of quirk in which I divulge all
the crazy circumstances that deepened (or shallowed?) the film experience.]

• Best review of the year belongs to Doug Benson (on American Wedding): The funniest of the three movies! If the three movies we're talking about are The Pianist, Schindler's List and American Pie II !
• No matter how many times you complain to management, they can't stop a 35mm print of Alien: The Director's Cut blown up to 70 mm from going blurry (apparently).
• If you get caught between the moon and Phoenix, AZ, the least entertaining thing that you can do is watch, in its entirety, Also Starring Pancho Villa while waiting for your wife to call.
• I think we can safely call Bad Boys II and How To Deal the WORST DOUBLE FEATURE EVER
• You may think you got a bunch of laughs when you saw Bad Santa, but I guarantee I got one more: The reverend who married my wife and I was seated two rows in front of us. At Bad Santa.
• The correct response, before City of God starts, to a Kill Bill Vol. 2 teaser is, in fact, a loud "Now That's what I'm talking about!"
• A movie theater steals your money when they sell you soda. At least that's what I found out when my mouth got dry from shushing two deaf old people who were playing "guess the next plot point" in Cold Mountain. If you play that game or find it "cute", please escort yourself into heavy traffic at your earliest convenience.
• The best time at the movies is often when you are drug to a film by your wife and you are surprised at how much it doesn't suck (The Core). Of course, that works both ways (Bulletproof Monk, or, Chow Yun-Fat is Jackie Chan in 'Bulletproof Monk').
• If you spend a weekend cooped up here (http://resortsusa.com/ow_tl.php), in a trailer that reaks of licorice-scented candles and America's Gold 100's, Friday Night acts as a wonderful cinematic ex-lax.
• Be thankful you were able to see The Good Thief without hassle. The first time I went to see it - at the Philadelphia Film Festival - they brought a print of an identically titled film by a Philadelphia native and suggested we watch that instead because they screwed up (lobby, cash back, groan). The second time - at the Regal Marketplace in Oaks - management was kind enough to show the first ten minutes of Basic before realizing their error (okay, I helped them realize it by storming the lobby and complaining). And I would like to think that this was just a mere coincidence.
• If you have saved the other two or three films that came out around the same time to see with others - and you've already sat through the turkey called Identity - you could be like my brother and sit through it again. And be reminded, constantly, by his younger brother, that he'll miss that three hours someday.
• Here's a tough one: If you snuck into The Italian Job and they leave all the house lights on, can you complain to management (even though you don't have a stub?). The answer is yes. Twice.
• Kill Bill: Vol 1 was worth taking the day off of work to see. However, if you see it the second time and its raining really hard - it might be better to get wet than to wield your daughter's mini-sized, rainbow umbrella. The teenagers that made fun of me (truly) trampled my very soul with their laughter.
• Here's how Laurel Canyon was reccomended to me (by my father): "Well, if you ever wanted to see [Frances McDormand] topless, here's your chance."
• None of us saw The Lizzie McGuire Movie 15 times. Except baab. Read his far-fetched (to put it mildly) comments here.
• When I saw Master and Commander, I think to beef up the experience, Regal Marketplace (in Oaks) was building another theater. I heard the hammering and banging of what sounded like a major construction project. I heard them right up until I found the manager (the guy in the tie, you know). Then it stopped.
• Sarah wrote the second best review of the year (it was on Master and Commander): "This movie was too mature for me".
• Just wanted to mention again how much I hate everyone who liked The Matrix Reloaded, everyone who made The Matrix Reloaded and everyone (excluding me) who has heard of The Matrix Reloaded.
• If you're midway through watching A Mighty Wind and you hear a "thump!" sound like a woman being hit by a speeding car, don't worry - it was just a woman being hit by a speeding car on the street below your window. (Seriously, though - how bizarre is that?)
• Did anyone leave The School of Rock not feeling absolutely *awesome*? (If yes, please e-mail me a screen shot of your corpse)
• After seeing The Shape of Things you could argue about the moral immediacies that developed in the film. Or you could have yet another long, drawn-out battle about religion with your wife. It's your choice. (Everybody still likes a guy who can make a woman cry, though, right? Right? Oh....)
• Want to appreciate your children and overcompensate for your negligence? Watch Stevie and Capturing the Friedmans. I've never been nicer to anyone in my entire life.
• Best delivery of what it promised? Swimming Pool. Nude French chick from start to finish. Does it get any better?
• I missed the Super Bowl half time show to watch the first thirty minutes of Sylvia. That beats everybody else's excuses tenfold.
• Here's how exhaustingly exciting Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is: I fell asleep for the last five minutes and had to admit it to my wife before she bestowed upon me her smarmy retelling of the ending.
• If you talk through a movie and you drop your wallet, there's a good chance I'm not going to return it to you. (X2: X-Men United)
• I won a bird book and you-ou-ou did-n't! (Winged Migration). Alright, I won a bird book for holding tickets to several other films that were showing in the festival. Instead of attending those films, though, I ended up taking the tickets back to TLA in Bryn Mawr for a full refund. Because I forgot to take my wallet the day I went to see them. And the tickets were in my wallet. Which was at home.